What's been confounding for some investors, and subsequently moved Facebook's shares, is how long Facebook says these investments could take to bear fruit. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's CEO, said in October that the investments he's making could take a decade before becoming "meaningful businesses in their own right." For a product to truly begin to matter, in Facebook's eyes, it needs to be used by about one-seventh of the world's population.

"Over a five-year time frame," Zuckerberg said, "we have a number of services which we think are well on their way to reaching 1 billion people: WhatsApp, Instagram and search are a number of them. And once we get to that scale, then we think that they will start to become meaningful businesses in their own right."

Over the past year in particular, Facebook has asked its investors to be patient and take a long view similar to Zuckerberg's. Even with advertising, Facebook has said it's taking a measured approach and that any analysts or shareholders expecting anything different are wrong.

So what will come over the next year?

More advertising

A video promoting King.com's Candy Crush Soda Saga was one of the most successful Facebook ads this year.
King

The move is a key win for Facebook, whose advertising business still ranks second to Google in global advertising revenue, according to eMarketer. But it's growing fast. Two years ago, when Facebook went public, about 5 percent of advertising worldwide was spent on mobile devices. By the end of 2014, that figure is expected to have reached 22 percent

"We believe that we have very substantial growth opportunities in front of us, and we plan to invest aggressively to capitalize on those opportunities," said Dave Wehner, Facebook's CFO, on an October conference call. "As such, we plan on 2015 being a significant investment year."

Jason Cipriani/CNET

More apps

This past year has been the year of Facebook apps. Nearly all of the mobile programs the social network now offers for iPhones, iPads and Android devices came out over the past 12 months: Paper, the reimagined way of looking at the newsfeed; Groups, a way to interact with Facebook's groups feature; Slingshot, a new take on mobile messaging; Rooms, an old take on social networking remade for the 21st century; Mentions, an app for celebrities; and Hyperlapse , the app from Instagram that helps you take better-looking time-lapse videos.

"One theme that should be clear from our work on products like Messenger, Groups and Instagram is that our vision for Facebook is to create a set of products that help you share any kind of content you want with any audience you want," said Zuckerberg on a January conference call.

Of course, Facebook isn't alone breaking its features into separate apps. Google, Apple and Yahoo are just some of the companies that have embraced this strategy. And you can be certain you'll see more of this from Facebook. So, fire up that app store and look out.

Virtual reality

One of the more unusual efforts at Facebook is Oculus VR, the virtual reality startup the company bought in March. Virtual reality has long been a domain of science fiction, particularly in early '90s movies like "The Lawnmower Man." The technology had practically no commercial success until two and a half years ago, when the Oculus headset was announced.

Oculus VR has also partnered with Samsung, the world's largest smartphone maker, to integrate its technology in a mobile virtual reality headset called "Gear VR." The device launched in December.

Project Morpheus and the Oculus headset are both expected to be released in the coming year, though neither company has publicly committed to a launch date. But the larger question is whether these devices will catch on with the broader public.

But even if the devices don't succeed initially, don't expect Zuckerberg to retreat. "One of the things I care really deeply about, on kind of a 10-year arc for the company, is having a different relationship to whatever the next set of computing platforms are and investing accordingly now to make sure when the next set of computing platforms get defined, we can help define what the next generation of computing is going to be," he said in a July conference call. "I think virtual reality, augmented reality, vision, some of the AI work that we're doing is all going to play into this in an important way."